Parenting for Smarties

Parents today are likely to be older, better educated, and more affluent than in previous generations. But that doesn't mean they don't need help. What it does mean is that they're less likely to embrace the wholesale advice of their own parents--who may not be around to lend their wisdom anyway--or of all-knowing experts like Dr. Spock.

Current parenting books reflect a more self-directed approach to raising children, in which moms and dads shop around to find the best advice for a specific age or issue. And parents are also more willing to trust in the practical advice of their peers, who may not be trained experts in the field, pediatricians, or longtime educators, but have served in the modern parenting trenches.

It is even possible now to have a sense of humor about oh-so-serious parenting issues. Take Pee, Poop and Potty Training by Alison Mackonochie. This is the ultimate answer book for parents without someone around to ask or emulate. How do we learn about this stuff anyway? Mackonochie has assembled a how-to-get-through-it-all book that provides chapters on the physiology of your child, the great diaper debate (cloth or disposable), diet, and choosing the right time to potty train. It even goes through the diaper-changing process, from cleaning the baby to fastening the diaper.

Mackonochie goes right to the real questions parents have, such as, "How should pee smell?" She explains how to pick out the right potty chair, delineating the advantages and disadvantages of four common types. This is practical advice, with helpful and engaging photographs, from someone who has clearly been there, done that.

Zen Parenting: The Art of Learning What You Already Know is a quieter journey to the practicalities of parenting. Judith Costello and Jurgen Haven have crafted this spare little book in order to "offer insights on how parents can mindfully focus on daily experiences in order to transform the parent/child dynamic." Beginning with brief guidelines for "Zen Parents" and a short summary of Zen, the book's structure moves from short situational stories, to related lessons, to brief paragraphs that instruct the reader in "Living the Lesson." Topics range from Zen Discipline to Rewarding the Good, and from Zen Jobs to Football Zen. The authors are the founding editors of "Parenting with Spirit" a magazine for child rearing with a spiritual perspective, and have, between them, raised or helped to raise eleven children.

To be a Zen parent, the authors write, is to "just be with ourselves and with our ever-changing experiences. We do not need to talk about them, judge them, or analyze them." Good news for tired or harried new parents everywhere. "Zen Parenting" is a quiet and reflective read.
Another author who stresses the positive is Susan Issacs Kohl, a self-described "parent-watcher." As the introduction tells us, she has been a mother, a teacher, a teacher of teachers, a preschool administrator, and a writer on all of it. Her The Best Things Parent Do: Ideas and Insights from Real-World Parents is meant to provide encouragement and reinforcement for parents, rather than address a litany of problems.

The book is divided into four sections: "The Best Attitudes Parents Hold," "The Best Things Parents Do," "The Best Things Parents Do For Themselves." and "The Best Things Parents Do For Each Other." Within each, short chapters such as "Think Like an Expert," "Let the Consequences Do the Talking," and "My Children Love Me So Much." begin with a related quotation and end with a small bit of homework for the reader, a way to intellectually expand on the concepts Kohl shares.

In the chapter "Find Somebody to Watch," Kohl begins with the oft-remembered Albert Schweitzer gem, "Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." Her parenting homework at the conclusion of this chapter is to "List five people whose relationships with children you admire. Next to each name, record the qualities or skills you've observed in them." It may sound like a small task, but it could yield important insights for parents. The Best Things is a quick dose of encouragement for the unappreciated parent.

Parenting Letters goes a step further, and provides the completed homework. With their "40 Original Letters" ready to tear out and give to your child, Dr. Susan Schulman and Lisa Fraser address the idea that parents are always looking for a way to get through to their kids and that writing it all down might "make up for my inability so say the right thing at the right time" or "could explain what I'm doing and why." The letters, printed on colorful pages ready to tear out, are designed for children age seven or older, and address topics such as "I'm sorry" and "Where are you going and when will you be home?"
Some of the entries are fun, like the letter meant to be sent back to the parent from camp, with fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice selections: "My counselor is (check one): __nice __ a monster."

Parents who are less inclined to explain their decisions or to apologize to their children, will find fewer of these letters to use. Clearly, though, the letters are a way of reaching out to children to express caring and love, and could help parents cross bridges to their children, or perhaps inspire original letter writing and conversations.

Laughing All The Way

Taking a less practical approach, Laughing and Learning: Adventures in Parenting, edited by Gayle Trent, is a gentle sharing of parenting stories, both cuddly and perplexing. Examples of topics addressed by the writers include "Don't Mess With Mom," about a late-night trip to the store precipitated by a last-minute school assignment, and "What Not to Do When Your Toddler Throws Up," an inept-dad tale. Each of the more than thirty entries is a short vignette, appealing more to the readers’ emotions than to any search for practical tips. Laughing and Learning is like eating the homemade sugar cookie served with coffee in the basement of church after the service; the cookie may be a little too sweet, but it goes with the polite ambience of the setting.

Swing all the way back to the practical with The Ultimate Survival Guide for the Single Father by Thomas Hoerner, a fulltime custodial father and the Executive Liaison of Fathers for Equal Rights, Inc. in Dallas, Texas. His "guy talk on running a household," is full of how-to advice. Hoerner doesn't dodge much in this handbook, starting from the get-go with divorce, and proceeding on through dating. In between there are chapters on "Co-Existing with the Co-Parent," and "Fast and Easy …Meals" (which, predictably, include some outdoor grilling).

Hoerner tells us in his introduction that 2000 census statistics show close to three million men now have custody of their children. He addresses society's changing attitudes (and the corresponding legal implications) regarding the awarding of custody to men and the increasing number of women voluntarily giving up custody to their former husbands. But the book does not read like a treatise on public policy. The writing is personal and conversational, inviting the reader into Hoerner's story.

Like single fatherhood, rampant materialism is another fact of modern childhood. Marketers know who they are pitching to, and parents, according to authors Laura J. Buddenberg and Kathleen M. McGee, would be well-served by understanding what effects "our hyper-commercialized society is having on your child." To answer this question, the authors of Who's Raising Your Child? Battling the Marketers for Your Child's Heart and Soul want to "help kids care less about things and more about people." The picture is pretty frightening, and the authors have packed in plenty of evidence, statistical and anecdotal, to back up their worries. For example, "Girls ages 12 to 18 spend more that $37 billion each year on clothes," according to Teen Research Unlimited, and "$13 billion was spent in 2002 to market food and drinks to American children" according to a report from New York University.

Happily, Buddenberg and McGee also include some terrific tips on how to combat the overwhelming number of messages bombarding kids. "Another way to make the acquisition of things more thoughtful is to require family members, at least occasionally, to give away a comparable possession when they get something new." Suggested activities include donating items to a homeless shelter, taking time to respond to disaster needs, or regularly volunteering for a charitable or community organization. "It's important for kids to be aware of how many people have so much less than they do rather than to always compare themselves to the more affluent."

The authors acknowledge that their publisher, Boys Town Press, also has something to promote. "Girls and Boys Town wants to sell something, too. We're marketing good character, values, and good relationships between parents and kids."

Navigating The Terrible Teens

While Who's Raising Your Child deals with marketing to children of all ages, numerous books focus on that most challenging of stages--the teen years. Stop the Rollercoaster by Sue Blaney is a workbook of ideas for parents of teenagers. It's not a passive read; it asks parents to answer tough questions. Chapters present realistic situations, provide overviews, objectives, instructions for getting the most from the chapters, discussion issues (for parenting groups), strategies, techniques, exercises (don't read this book without a pen in your hand) and a list of issues to examine and discuss.

For example, Chapter four deals with "Friends, Culture, and Risk Behavior" and presents a classic teenager situation: "You get a call from the parents of one of your daughter's friends. He has been caught with a small pipe in his pocket. He told his parents that it belongs to your daughter. How do you respond? How can you read what is happening in your child's social life? How can you determine if this is mere experimentation or if she is really using drugs?"

Stop the Rollercoaster is like a well-organized college-level class on dealing with teenage offspring, wrapped up in an easy-to-use-workbook. Parents searching for a lifeline will feel that they've grabbed on to something substantial with "Stop the Rollercoaster."
One of the toughest aspects of parenting teenagers is addressed by Dr. Susan Smith Kuczmarski in her The Sacred Flight of the Teenager: A Parent's Guide to Stepping Back and Letting Go. Beyond the day-to-day trenches, Kuczmarski helps the reader/parent think through the transitions from teen to adult and addresses parents' own necessary transitions as well. In a series of forty personal essays, the author organizes her writing under the topics: Letting Go, Keeping in Touch, Exploring, Acquiring Skills and Connecting. Kuczmarski's personal experiences help parents think about the other end of parenting, the time to set young adults free: "Your role is clear: Guard your teen from harm, foul play, and injury. Go to bat for a teen to prevent abuse, maltreatment, and crippling damage, when your teen is in real danger. But let teens go to bat for themselves when they are not in imminent danger."

In keeping with the targeted nature of many parenting books, Walter Roark has written, Keeping Your Grandkids Alive till Their Ungrateful Parents Arrive: The Guide for Fun-Loving Granddads. Roark-s book is a seriously funny look at grand parenting in general, a refresher course on taking care of children, and--despite the author-s claim that, "This book is for Granddads Only!"--a perfectly enjoyable book for anyone who, after taking a few years" break, finds themselves with a little one on their hands again.

Roark's book isn't about babysitting. He starts you out with grandpa etiquette for receiving the blessed news, and runs all the way through to "The Rights (and Wrongs) of Spoiling." On first visits, grandpas are advised, "A new mother's work is never done. This is one of the main factors in every grandparent visit. Because of their endless duties, new mothers tend to get tired and cranky. New babies get cranky too. When mommy and baby are cranky together, everybody around them gets cranky pretty fast. Try to get out of there before everybody gets cranky." Good advice indeed.

For those who can't just make a quick exit before the tough stuff starts, parenting books combine instruction, inspiration and the comfort of being reminded that no matter what the challenge, there are other moms and dads who've been through it before.